Red Hot Holiday Bundle

by Alison Kent

  ‘Get off me, you brute,’ she choked out thickly.

  ‘I will when you promise to stay still and listen,’ he said huskily, but she knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Like her, he was aware that this was the closest they’d been in months—and she could see by the look in his eyes that he liked it. She could feel every tensing, flexing, sensational muscle he possessed, and the worst part about it was that he could feel every one of hers.

  His jacket lay spread open on either side of her; his long fingers were buried in her hair as they cupped her head. Her skirt had rucked up around her hips and the heels of her hands were braced against his shirt-front, to stop him coming any closer, her tense fingers fighting to relax into contact with the familiar warm firmness they knew waited a tantalisingly small inch away.

  She sucked in some air and her breasts made that contact. A panic of pleasuring frissons set her fighting him for all she was worth.

  She pushed at his chest and bucked her hips in an effort to dislodge him. She gasped and choked and spat out words she had never used in her life. When nothing made him move she hit out at him with her fists, then tried using her nails—until he denied them the chance to do any damage by capturing both wrists and pinning them to the bed above her head.

  Her eyes flashed blue lightning at him and her lips quivered. ‘You are a faithless, cheating liar and I hate you,’ she hissed.

  ‘The only liar I know is the one who told you I’m sleeping with your cousin!’

  ‘So you took her to our apartment for a chat, did you?’ she flashed up at him. ‘After you seduced her across a candlelit dinner table for two!’

  The sarcasm clicked. He went still, his eyes hooded over.

  Nina began to struggle free with new impetus.

  ‘Stop it while I think.’ His strength subdued her.

  ‘You’re crushing me.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he denied, making her aware of the way he was evenly distributing his weight between two key points, his bent arms and his legs placed on either side of her own.

  ‘Louisa,’ he murmured in the end. ‘She saw us together and rushed straight back here to tell you what she’d seen. What a pleasure it must be to have such a caring mother,’ he mocked cynically. ‘I think I would rather have an indifferent one, like my own.’

  At last he moved away, rolling onto his back beside her to stare grimly at absolutely nothing.

  Nina sat up then, and surprised herself by doing nothing either. ‘She’s her father’s daughter,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, si,’ he drawled, as if that explained everything.

  Which it did. Louisa had not come chasing up here to surprise her daughter with the pleasure of her company for lunch. She hadn’t even come bearing grim warnings about what Rafael was doing in London for Nina’s benefit. She’d done it because she’d seen her allowance at risk and had wanted to jolt Nina out of her apathy and get her to fight for her ailing marriage before they all lost their only income source.

  ‘What it is to be a billionaire,’ Rafael murmured bitterly, making Nina aware that he was thinking more or less the same thing. ‘It makes you so popular your head could swell if you so allowed it.’

  ‘You’re as guilty as everyone else of using your money to get what you want,’ she threw back.

  His hand came out, long fingers trailing lightly down her arm. ‘I had to buy you, cara,’ he murmured huskily. ‘It was the only way you would have me.’

  Nina pulled her arm away, then rubbed where his fingers had been. ‘Stop trying to divert the subject.’

  ‘This is the subject,’ he argued. ‘I never wanted Marisia. I always wanted you.’

  ‘Gosh, it showed,’ she responded bitterly. ‘Especially when you told me you did not want children—having told her that you did.’

  She got up then, feeling sick again, restless and—hurt.

  ‘I never said that.’ He sat up. ‘Why would I say that to Marisia when I knew it wasn’t possible?’

  He had a—point to which Nina had no answer. ‘Well, you didn’t bother to tell me that you thought you couldn’t have children. Maybe you told her that you could because you thought it was what she wanted to hear.’

  ‘If I did then I made a lousy error of judgement,’ he denounced, ‘because Marisia does not want children. She cannot bear the thought of them. She does not even want the child she carries!’

  Nina swung round. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘Exactly what I say.’ He got to his feet, angry fingers dragging the bow tie loose. ‘Marisia does not want the baby.’ His shirt button was loosened next. ‘I spent the last few days talking her out of aborting it. She agreed in the end—hence tonight’s announcement.’ The jacket came next and was dropped onto the bed.

  Nina stared at him, looking at what he had just said from a completely different perspective. ‘And how long have you been in such close contact with her that she felt she could confide all of this in you?’

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed. ‘I think am digging myself a hole here.’

  ‘You’re so right you are,’ Nina agreed.

  He strode across the room towards the drinks tray. ‘I have never been out of contact with her—OK?’

  The defensive OK ripped her heart in two. Did he love Marisia so much that he had not been able to keep away from her?

  ‘She was struggling in New York. Homesick—miserable,’ he pushed on as he uncapped a decanter. ‘She got into an affair with this wealthy businessman, then found out too late that he had a wife and children tucked out of way somewhere. She decided that London was the best place to have an abortion. We—bumped into each other. She told me what she was about to do.’

  ‘Bumped into each other?’ Nina repeated. ‘As in—by accident?’

  He grimaced. ‘She called me,’ he added with a shrug. ‘Said she was in trouble and needed help.’ Cognac splashed into a glass. ‘We arranged to meet for dinner and she told me about the baby then. You know my past,’ he added grimly. ‘What right has any woman to deny a child its right to survive?’

  ‘What right does any man have to deny his own child?’

  ‘Marisia’s baby is not mine,’ he repeated angrily.

  ‘I was talking about my—our baby!’ Nina shrilled. ‘You denied responsibility for that!’

  ‘And you know why!’ he thrust back at her.

  ‘Because you had a vasectomy ten years ago, therefore I had to be the faithless one who’d taken a lover?’ she lashed back. ‘I know what you prefer to believe, Rafael.’

  ‘I was still prepared to love it as my own.’

  ‘And hate me all you could.’

  ‘Daniel Fraser was in your life before I came into it. He had an emotional grip on you that I could not break.’

  ‘Oh, you broke it,’ she assured him. ‘You bought out his company and had me dismissed!’

  ‘After he seduced you into bed to get his revenge on you for marrying me!’

  ‘Revenge?’ she repeated. ‘Well, thanks for letting me know that I’m only good for a quick lay in the name of revenge!’

  ‘I did not mean it like that.’ He sighed.

  ‘You married me to get your revenge on Marisia. Daniel seduced me in revenge for marrying you!’ She laughed because it was so ridiculous to hear it said. ‘I suppose I am seducing Fredo to get revenge on you for turning me into a cheap little tramp!’

  He put the glass to his lips again and drank, his taut profile ripping her to shreds because she could see from it that was exactly what he did think!

  ‘Very Sicilian,’ she derided shakily. Then, because she just could not stand here listening to this any longer, ‘Get out of here, Rafael,’ she said, ‘before I really say something you won’t like to listen to.’

  ‘Say it,’ he invited. ‘At least we are talking, which is infinitely better than the silence we’ve enjoyed for the last six months!’

  Without warning the lid came flying off her temper. Before she knew what she was g
oing to do she’d closed the gap between them and had snatched the glass from his hand. It landed with a crash back on the tray.

  ‘OK, you asked for it.’ She looked up at him, blue eyes full of burning contempt. ‘Revenge is a fine word to fall from the lips of the man who took revenge on his own body by denying it the right to reproduce!’

  He went pale as the hard accusation hit home. ‘Only a fool would want to pass on my genetic fingerprint.’ He turned his back to her.

  ‘You don’t know your genetic fingerprint!’ Nina lashed at that rigidly set back. ‘You only fear what it might be!’

  ‘Is this leading somewhere?’ he bit out tautly.

  ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Because you fear it so much that you could not even bring yourself to look it in the face when I got pregnant! If you had then you would have started to ask questions about yourself! It’s common knowledge that a vasectomy can reverse itself—that’s the power of our instinct to reproduce! But did you check that out? No.’ she said, and began to shiver. ‘You preferred to believe I could sleep around like a whore.’

  ‘I did check it out…’

  ‘What?’ he’d spoken so low in his chest that she thought she’d misheard him. Then he flexed his shoulders and she knew she had not misheard a thing. ‘When?’ she said, and because she needed to look at him when he answered she stepped round in front of him. What she saw written on his face dragged the breath from her throat. ‘You know, don’t you?’ she heaved out breathlessly. ‘You know the baby I lost was your baby!’ She began to tremble all over her. ‘Do you feel bad about that, Rafael, or are you all the more relieved that it’s gone?’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ he rasped. ‘I never wished it any harm!’

  She hit him so hard it rocked him on his feet.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  TEARS flashed like blue lightning across her eyes as she watched her fingerprints stand out on his cheek. She did not regret hitting him, but she did not want to look at that arrogant face wearing her mark of contempt so she turned away.

  ‘Get out of my house,’ she said thickly. ‘I never want to see you again so long as I live.’

  It took every bit of withered strength she had left in her shaking limbs to turn and walk away from him.

  ‘No.’ He sounded gruff and harsh. She was not surprised to find herself caught by the shoulders again. ‘I want you to listen,’ he rasped, then let free with a string of thick, tight curses when his touch turned her to stone.

  It was his turn to step around her so he could look her full in her icy white face. ‘I am not going to let you shut me out now you have managed to remember that I do exist—faults and all,’ he warned.

  It was the faults and all part that made her unbend a little. The knowledge that he knew he had some deep personal issues that made him impossible to live with.

  ‘All right, say what you want to say,’ she invited stiffly, folding her arms beneath her breasts and locking her eyes on the floor.

  His second string of soft curses turned all women from victims into ruthless tormentors. ‘How you can think that a man like me would want to involve myself with two women at the same time is beyond me—No, don’t cry, cara,’ he said gruffly. ‘If you let those tears fall then I will not be responsible for what I—’

  ‘Just talk!’ she cut in thickly.

  He sucked in some air, his fingers tightening their grip on her arms. ‘I took the test twice,’ he said. ‘The first time the result was inconclusive, and because it came only a couple of weeks after you told me you were pregnant I was happy to hang on to my version of the truth. I was scared that I might have made the biggest mistake in my life, so it suited me to push all the blame onto you.’

  ‘My hero,’ she mocked him.

  He let go of her, swung away tensely, then immediately swung back again. ‘Do you want the truth or some dressed-up version that makes me appear bigger than I am?’ he lashed at her. ‘You went away with Daniel Fraser for the weekend!’

  ‘It was a business convention he was my boss and the whole firm was there!’

  ‘The whole firm did not stop him from getting into your room!’

  ‘He came to collect my suitcase!’

  ‘I came to collect you!’ he thrust back at her. ‘And found myself having to break up a bloody clinch! He said, ‘Nice having you, Nina,’ before my fist was in his face!’

  ‘I told you—he tried it on but that was all. Nothing else happened!’

  ‘And I did not believe it!’

  ‘Did not want to believe it.’

  ‘Did I suggest the dressed-up version would sound better for me? My apologies.’ He bowed stiffly. ‘I was wrong. I still come out of it looking like the fool. And watch those tears,’ he tagged on when he saw them fill her eyes again. ‘Because I’m still hovering on the brink of saying to hell with this and throwing you back on the bed!’

  Nina heaved in a deep breath, feeling her breasts quiver against her crossed arms—as if they preferred the bed option too!

  ‘So you took the test and it was inconclusive?’ she prompted, in an effort to get this back on track.

  He nodded, then pushed his hands into his trouser pockets and drew himself in. ‘We left London and came here to live. You walked around this house like a wounded animal and I hated it,’ he went on thickly. ‘We did not look at each other; we did not even speak!’

  For weeks it had gone on, Nina recalled bleakly. Weeks and weeks of feeling like a stranger to herself. He’d told her he’d had a vasectomy. And then he’d told her why. ‘I don’t want children. I never want children!’

  ‘Well, tough luck, Rafael,’ she’d said. ‘Because I am having your baby, whatever you think or want or believe…’

  ‘In the end I could stand it no longer,’ he continued. ‘I took a hard look at what we were doing to each other and decided that if I wanted our marriage to survive I was going to have to swallow my pride and tell you I could forgive and forget, that I wanted to put the past aside and try again…’

  And he’d told her with enough stiff-necked coldness to put an icy chill on her flesh, Nina recalled.

  ‘You flew at me in a rage, then rushed out of this room vowing you were going to leave me. I went after you, knowing I had made a mess of it. You were already on the stairs. I said something—I don’t know what…’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I did not mean that the way it came out…’

  ‘You turned to respond, but the front door flew open and your grandfather walked in,’ he went on. ‘As you spun back to look at him you stumbled off the top step—’

  Nina put a hand up to cover her eyes. ‘Please—don’t say any more,’ she begged.

  ‘But I have to say it,’ he insisted. ‘It was my fault! I moved too late to stop you from falling. You lost the baby. Now I watch you take that fall every night in my sleep!’

  ‘And you think that I don’t?’ Her hand dropped away again. He was standing in front of her, big and tense, with the agony of guilt carving grooves in his face. ‘Do you think you are the only one to carry blame around?’ she questioned. ‘I was the careless one! I was the one who didn’t watch my step! I was the stupid one who let you get to me the way that you did!’

  ‘That is the whole point.’ He reached for her again, long fingers curling over her slender arms. ‘You might pretend to be the cool English rose, but you have so much Sicilian passion running riot inside you that you are a danger to yourself! I knew that. I should have backed off when you started shouting, then the fall would not have happened.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry about it. You backed off afterwards,’ she said bitterly. ‘So far back that you hardly came home—and you took a lover to keep you company at the same time!’

  Dio,’ he rasped. ‘I did not take a lover—have you heard anything I’ve said? I stayed away because you coped better when I was not here to remind you. I—Oh, don’t, dammit,’ he groaned, when he saw the tears arriving yet again.

  Then it came—th
e muttered, ‘What the hell?’ And the next thing she knew she was lifted up hard against him, with his arms wrapped around her and his mouth taking driving possession of the first sob as it broke on her lips.

  It was a hellish kind of heaven. She hated him so much, yet her arms hooked around his neck and clung so tightly there was no way he could break free. She sobbed and she whimpered and she kissed him back with a passion that sang like a shrill tune in her head. When he managed to drag his mouth away she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed like a baby.

  He didn’t like it. She could tell that by the way he stood so tense and silent while she sobbed.

  ‘You know what you need?’ he rasped out then.

  Nina kept her face buried in his shoulder and shook her head.

  ‘You need me,’ he told her. ‘All of me. Wrapped around you, inside you, naked flesh, naked passion—how else are you going to get rid of all this grief?’

  ‘I want to hate you,’ she mumbled on another sob.

  ‘And you hate to want me. I know,’ he grated, then he turned and did what he’d been threatening to do—returned them both to the bed. He covered her mouth again, taking her sobs as his own while she clung and let him.

  She let him stroke her body and remove her dress. She let him kiss her where he wanted, let him suck gently on her breasts through the sheer black teddy and let him slide long fingers between her legs. And he did it all so carefully and sombrely that the tears began running down her cheeks again.

  ‘Do you want me to stop?’ His voice, like the finger he trailed across her wet cheek, was gentle and grim.

  She shook her head, her hand still clutching his nape because the rest of her was beginning to float. ‘Take me away with you,’ she whispered.

  There wasn’t a moment when he questioned where she wanted to be taken to. The breath feathered from him as with a solemn gentleness he drew the teddy from her body and whispered it down her legs. Her knees came up, her toes curling inside her silk stockings as she curved herself into him. Her mouth hunted his, lips soft and trembling and desperately needy, touching and tasting while he dealt with the stockings too.